Page 4 - A History of Women in the Coast Guard
P. 4
Nineteen-year-old twin sisters Genevieve and Lucille Baker were the
first Coast Guard women in uniform, They transferred from
the Naval Coastal Defense Reserve dur
ing World War I, "
2 • A history of women in the Coast Guard
immigrant wife, Kate, were appointed keeper and assistant keeper of Robbins Reef Light, off Staten Island, N,Y., in 1883. The light was a conical iron structure at the end of a sub merged reef - a man-made island within sight of the Manhattan skyline, When Walker died of pneumonia in 1886, his widow took over his job. For the next 33 years she climbed to the top of the light tower and filled the kerosene lamp several times each night, assisted by her son and daughter. The children went to school on the mainland, but Walker rarely set foot outside the light house grounds, Over the years she saved some 50 people from drowning, According to a New York Times reporter who inter viewed her in 1906,
"AJI that she knows from personal experience of the great land to which she came '" is comprised within the limits of Staten Island, New York City, and Brooklyn ... As a wife, mother, and widow, the happiest and sad
dest days of her peaceful life have been spent within the circular walls of her volun tary prison, She declares that if she were compelled to live anywhere else she would be the most miserable wom an on earth, and that no mansion on Millionaires' Row could tempt her to leave of her own free will."
W alker retired in 1919 and moved to a house on Staten Is land, where she died 12 years lat er. The New York Evening Post car ried an obituary:
"There are the queenly lin ers, the grim battle craft, the countless carriers of com merce that pass in endless procession. And amid all this and in sight of the city of towers and the torch of liber
ty lived this sturdy little woman, proud of her work and content in it, keeping her lamp alight and her windows clean, so that New York har bor might be safe for ships that pass in the night."
In the early 20th Century the
number of female lighthouse keep ers declined steadily, Steam-driv en foghorns replaced the old fog
bells, and oil lamps gave way to
electric lights. A 1948 issue of The Coast Guard Bulletin commented that these tech nological improvements had "placed the du ties of keepers of lighthouses beyond the ca pacity of most women," The last of the wom an lighthouse keepers apparently was Fan nie Salter, who lived at Turkey Point Light, Md., from 1925 to 1947,
'Tilt 1) ~t
cI ri <"II as~i. 'le 1 t t .
The Coast Guard was created Jan, 28, 1915, when President Woodrow Wilson signed a congressional law consolidating the Revenue Cutter Service and the Life SaVing
Service, The new service was to operate un der the Department of the Treasury during peacetime, and to be absorbed by the Navy upon declaration of war. A little more than two years later, the latter provision was put into effect when the United States declared war on Germany,
